Poll: Are Finances Keeping You Awake at Night?

Close to four in five respondents (79 percent) to the National Foundation for Credit Counseling’s® (NFCC) July poll admitted that their personal finances keep them awake at night. The second highest number of responses came in a distant second, with 13 percent indicating that they sleep like a baby. The remaining choices were marital concerns, job security, and problems with children, which each had single digit responses.

In addition to the obvious credit problems resulting from overwhelming debt, financial concerns can wreck marriages, tear families apart, and put a person’s job in jeopardy due to being distracted while at work. Debt is like a dark cloud that follows a person 24 hours per day. They wake up with it, take it to work with them, and as the NFCC poll confirmed, they take it back to bed with them.

“There are two pieces of good news that can be gleaned from the poll,” said Gail Cunningham, spokesperson for the NFCC. “First of all, the respondents were able to identify the source of their distress, and secondly, they went to a reliable and trusted resource, www.DebtAdvice.org, for help. Their next step should be to reach out to an NFCC member agency for customized and solution-oriented assistance.”

If someone has personal finance issues, they are not alone. The 2014 NFCC Financial Literacy Survey revealed that 71 percent of consumers, or roughly 179 million people, admitted to having personal finance worries, with not enough savings, job issues, debt, and credit topping the list.